We
live in a cultural system which places more value on inanimate property than on
the life of sentient animals who feel pleasure, pain, fear, and attachment to
other living creatures – thus we attribute property status to these
animals so that they can be most efficiently exploited in order to further human
ends. For example, if a person living in the post-industrial United States who
was running a business that raises pigs for food were to keep the pigs in tiny
cages for most of their lives, then send the animals to be violently killed at a
slaughterhouse in order for the business to profit financially – then this
business would be recognized by the state and the bulk of its citizens as a
legal and legitimate enterprise. However, if a group of people, who believe that
living, breathing, feeling creatures deserve the right to be treated as if they
are more than just property that exists to be exploited for the profit and
pleasure of their owners, act on their beliefs by breaking into the
aforementioned business in order to liberate the pigs and take action against
the physical property used to exploit the pigs - then these people would be
considered domestic terrorists by the FBI.[1]
The domestic terrorist label is given to many animal liberation groups,
particularly the Animal Liberation Front, despite the fact that they
exist to promote compassion for all life, and seek to prevent and end violence
towards all sentient animals – both human and nonhuman.[2] It is one of the duties of
the state to protect the property of its citizens; but is the state justified in
relegating animals to the status of property? This article will examine the
system of exploitation that has been so rationalized into our way of life that
we protect the property rights of those who enslave and kill sentient beings for
profit over the right to life of the sentient beings who are exploited by this
system.

Before
delving right into discussing the actual legal status of animals in our society,
it is important to get a scope of the massive nature of the animal exploitation
industry; which can, in part, be explained with the following data: The USDA
National Agricultural Statistics Service maintains reports on the numbers of
the various livestock commodities used each year in U.S. food production. The
number of commodities that we know as chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs, cows, and
sheep which were killed for food in 2001 – was over 9.9 BILLION[3]. --- In other words, in that
one year, nearly ten billion living, breathing, feeling, warm-blooded creatures
had their lives taken from them by American human institutions. That means, on
average, more than 314 animals are violently killed by the food
industry in the United
Stateseach second of every
day,
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year after year after
year. Therefore, if it took you about two minutes to read this far – then it
is fair to estimate that more than 37,000 animals were killed in American
slaughterhouses since you started reading this article.

Gary
Francione, Professor at Rutgers University School of Law and one of the
nation’s leading scholars of Animal Law, believes that a means central to
maintaining the hierarchy of violently exploiting nonhuman animals for human
means involves the way the law sees nonhuman animals as property that are
intrinsically worth whatever value a human owner can assign to the nonhuman
animal.[4] Francione reasons, as long
as nonhuman animals are treated as property, they will be used as a resource or
commodity that will serve to benefit the anthropocentric view of progress, or
satisfy a taste or amusement involving nonhuman animal flesh or pain, or be used
in order for human animals in the business of exploiting nonhuman animals to
profit financially. Francione draws further along this line of logic by
expressing his belief that animal welfare reform is not capable of
properly addressing this issue. For example, even though a law exists called the
Humane Slaughter Act, slaughterhouse workers have testified that cows
often have their legs cut off and are skinned while they are still conscious.[5] Though such cruel acts are
illegal, enforcement agencies regularly fail to prosecute these cases because in
practice the anti-cruelty statutes rarely serve to protect nonhuman animals from
exploitation, and they are often only enforced when human interests are at
stake.[6] The human slaughterhouse
owners are interested in profits. Therefore, because the owners won’t lose
profits when a live cow has it hooves cut off, there is little interest in
prosecuting the case.

Evidence
which backs Francione’s claim that the property status of nonhuman animals is
used to keep them enslaved as tools to be used for human ends can be seen in the
report done by Temple Grandin for the American Meat Institute. Grandin states
that the primary goal of the animal slaughtering industry is to ensure that
killing animals is “efficient and profitable.” Furthermore, in Grandin’s
report, she explains that additional protections for animals about to be
slaughtered cannot be “cost-justified”, when benefits to animal welfare
cannot be assessed as profitable.[7] The few statutes that exist
to protect animals from unnecessary violence, suffering, and torture at the
hands of humans directly correlate with the ways that we use animals. In other
words, the animal welfare laws that are supposed to exist to give basic welfare
protections to the billions of animals used annually in the United
States for food, research, and
entertainment – essentially protect the value of the animal in human terms.
This is because, in the eyes of the law, if killing, torturing, enslaving, or
exploiting a nonhuman animal will in any way provide humans with food,
entertainment, or a research subject – then such exploitation is considered
“necessary.”[8] Therefore, legally, even the
most trivial of human desires, such as the desire of certain humans to eat the
gourmet food, Foie Gras – can justify the following practice as necessary
to create the Foie Gras: Farmers shove a tube down the throat of a duck or goose
in order to force feed it until the animal’s liver is excessively large; then
upon slaughtering the bird this sickly liver is considered to be the delicacy
necessary to make such gourmet food.[9]

However,
in reality, human consumption of Foie Gras is by no means necessary. In fact, no
animal flesh or any other animal product is necessary for human survival. The
American Dietetic Association states that, “appropriately planned vegetarian
diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in
the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”[10]
Furthermore, William C. Roberts, M.D., Professor and
Director of the Baylor University Medical Center, and Editor in Chief of the
American Journal of Cardiology, stated in this peer-reviewed journal,

Thus,
although we think we are one and we act as if we are one, human beings are not
natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us
because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never
intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.[11]

Evidence supporting Dr. Roberts’
belief that humans are natural herbivores can be seen in the achievements of
ultra-marathon runner Scott Jurek. In 2003, Jurek, who follows a completely
plant-based vegan diet, won his fifth straight Western States Endurance Run –
a competition where athletes run for 100 miles through the mountainous,
wilderness trails of the northwestern United
States.[12]
Health benefits aside, some people would say that they enjoy the taste of
nonhuman animal flesh so much that it is necessary to their personal
fulfillment and enjoyment in life; however, in doing so, these people often fail
to consider that there are numerous vegetarian meat alternatives readily
available in most American supermarkets and there are literally thousands of
vegetarian recipes that are extremely varied in their taste and texture – and
are also very healthy.[13]
Despite what the mainstream media and the meat, dairy, and egg industries would
have people believe - it is entirely unnecessary for American humans to
enslave and violently kill ten billion nonhuman land animals a year for food;
yet the law justifies such killing as necessary. Therefore, our system
which treats living, breathing, feeling, sentient animals as property in order
to most efficiently exploit these animals, can claim it is necessary to enslave
and kill these animals – but the claim that it is indeed necessary is
undoubtedly flawed.

Not
only is there a flaw in the argument that we are justified in legitimatizing the
slaughter of animals because it is supposedly necessary; there is also an
inherent flaw in the legal notion that animals should be considered property. In
order to illustrate the reasoning behind my statement that assigning property
status to animals is flawed, I’d like to use the following example --- If
you were to look at a tractor lawn mower, you might say that such a tool is
necessary to efficiently mow a large grassy area in a park. Let’s say a human
owns this tractor lawn mower, and it is their property. The tractor lawn mower
has no value other than how it is valued in its utility to its owner; because if
the mower wasn’t capable of performing its function as a tool used to mow
grass, then humans would assign the mower little or no value; and it is highly
likely that no other living creature would value the ineffective mower either.
However, let’s say that an animal is owned by a human, and this animal is
intended to be raised and used for its fur, to make a coat. To the human who
owns the animal, a property value can be assigned to the animal based upon how
much the human owner can sell the skin and fur of the animal. In this example,
let’s say that activists broke into the owner’s fur farm and spray painted
the fur of the animal – thus making the animal’s fur valueless to the owner,
because the owner couldn’t sell the animal’s fur to anyone with spray paint
all over it. Then, the animal, much like the lawn mower, possesses little to no
value to the human or human institution which owns either piece of property.
Whereas the mower is essentially valueless to all life when it cannot perform
its function to serve humans by being used as a tool to cut grass – the life
of the animal who would be used by a human that profits from selling its fur,
still has a value. Perhaps, the animal is not worth anything to the owner; but
the animal still values its own life, it doesn’t wish to keel over and die
just because its flesh isn’t valuable to the fur industry anymore. The animal
has a brain, and is conscious, is able to perceive the world, and possesses
sensory perception. The animal values its life, actively pursues survival, and
avoids death – regardless of whether its human owner values the life of the
animal or not. Given that an animal values its life whether or not humans do,
and that a lawn mower does not value its existence, and has no sensory
perception, nor is valued by any life if humans do not value it – is it
reasonable to attribute both the animal and the lawn mower the same status of property
in the eyes of the law? By attributing a property status to animals, we
effectively deny that the life of an animal has any inherent value other than
how it can be used to profit its owner.

In
conclusion, our society uses enculturation to convince nearly all members of our
society, beginning from the moment of their birth, that the animal flesh, eggs,
and milk products that we consume are somehow wholesome and good tasting –
when the truth is that these products are the end result of a violent system of
unnecessary exploitation that exists solely to profit from the enslavement and
slaughter of nearly ten billion chickens, pigs, and cows each year. By assigning
property status to animals, we are able to maintain this system of exploitation,
because when nonhuman animals are viewed only as property, they can be used most
efficiently as a profitable commodity: when companies start to concern
themselves with animal welfare any more so than is necessary to exploit animals
most efficiently – then these companies will not be as profitable.
Therefore,
if we believe that life is in fact valuable and important, then we must choose
to reject systems that treat sentient creaturesas objects that exist to be used as commodities to be exploited for
profit;and there is one clear and
effective way that each individual can do this – by choosing to abstain from
consuming animal products and going VEGAN!

[1]
Best, Steven.The Son of
Patriot Act and the Revenge on Democracy. Impact Press, June-July 2003.

[3]
This figure is calculated by adding up the total number slaughtered from
each of the commodity summary reports for broilers, layers, turkeys, ducks,
cattle/calves, pigs, and sheep that are published by the USDA –
National Agricultural Statistics Service. The total number of these
types of animals killed in 2001 by the food industry was approximately 9.9
billion.